Žarka

Žarana

Podsecamo vas da je 10 septembra 2006 cetiri godine od smrti jedne od najvecih feministkinja naseg grada,feministicke antropoloskinjeZARANE PAPIC.

Pored njene knjige POLNOST I KULTURA u izdanju Biblioteke XX Vek, Prosveta, Beograd,jedna od prvih feministickih knjiga na nasem jeziku je bio zbornik ANTROPOLOGIJA ZENE, 1983, kojeg su sa ogromnim entuzijazmom i posvecenoscu radile dve prijateljice i feministicke antopoloskinje Lydia Skevicky, iz Zagreba, koja je umrla u saobracojnoj nesreci 1990, i Zarana Papic, Iz uvoda zbornika ANTROPOLOGIJA ZENE, citiramo vam pasus napisan pre vise od 25 godina o jednom od kljucnih feministickih pitanja - o privatnom i javnom.

"Vecina autorki istice povezanost podele rada po polu i razlicitog vrednovanja doprinosa muskaraca i zena sa dihotomijom privatno i javno. U vecini poznatih drustava zenama pripada svet privatnog a muskaricma svet javnog delovanja. Ovde privatno uzimamo u smislu usko definisanog, preglednog, predviljivog i statusno neuvazenog podrucja drustvenosti u kome se nalaze zene, za razliku od javnog podrucja koji pripada muskarcima i u kojem dominira "govor vlasti", autoritet, moc i druge nadlicne kategorije. Pripadanje polova razlicitim i asimetricnim drustvenim prostorima (sa svim posledicama koje to nosi) ne moze se objasnjavati pukom "pripadnoscu" podele rada po polu jer bi znacilo da ljudskom istorijom vladaju nepromenjlivi bioloski zakoni polnosti na koje ljudska praksa ne moze imati nikakvog uticaja. To sto su drustvene nauke u analizi suprotnosti privatnog i javnog vrlo retko doticale problem ondosa polova govori o tome da one problem polnosti, podele rada po polu, drustveni karakter muskosti i zenskosti zapravo i nisu smatrale cinjenicom u dirkemovskom smislu. Polna simetrija ostala je neistrazeno podrucje nauka i istorijske svesti drustva o samom sebi. "

Kad je umrla ovo sam napisala

Jasmina Tesanovic

ZARKA

I do not know how to begin, but I must… I do not want to miss saying
whatever I still can say, just because of my confusion, pain, since
confusion and pain exorcise out of me words like viruses… Who cares
about my style? I want to tell the truth and the truth is slipping
through my fingers. Only images, and a word here or there, can compete
with the untruth regarding the death of my friend from childhood,
Zarana.

Beginning with the untrue truth that she is no more, no longer
here just round the corner in that red building. Every evening on my
way back home, I threw glances at that place, wondering: is Zarana
there, how is she, should I ring the bell…

We called her Zarka in the family. She danced very well, when
she
was very young as well as recently in Budapest, in a disco…

Her father was my father’s teacher in a small village in
Herzegovina. Her father supported my father in his outstanding talents
and took him out of a rural family into the big world. Zarka and I met
in Milan. Maybe we knew each other before then, but I cannot remember,
I was “small” and she was “big”.
I remember her entering our flat in Milan dressed in an Indian robe,
very thin, her hair extremely short. I was amazed and later on she told
me that she was, too, by my fluffy long hair and leather outfit.

I know that somehow I felt afraid of her.

She, too, said she, of me.

We looked at each other as two women, straight to the marrow. We
established something immediately, but that something could not find
its language at that time…

Our fathers were dictating the rules and the language. We met as
daughters to our fathers, on their ground, in their language… while we
each were actually running away from home… but neither knew it, as far
as the other one was concerned.

We didn't even know we were feminists or that we would become
feminists, and that we would passionately be in feminism until the end
of our lives. I know that we looked at each other’s clothes and
make-up, at our feminine sides, which were very striking in both of us,
and that we were telling each other, how pretty you are… That that
wasn't feminism in the Yugoslavia of that time, and maybe not even in
the new wave of leftist feminism in Italy… That habit we kept until
our very last meeting recently…. We always would look at each other,
complaining or boasting about female bodies from a female point of
view…but as little girls.

On certain occasions I thought, we do look silly, especially in
front of a serious feminist student audience; but we witnessed in each
other the change, the consciousness raising, and "the unveiling" as she
used to say… Of course it never ended, new veils were coming up, like
a snake’s skin… until her very last day.

I am trying to avoid the confusion and doubt which always
accompanies the death of those who actually can never die within us:
close witnesses of ours, those who, even when they go away, still live
in you, making you live for them. To think what they would say, on
occasions where they are missing, but so needed. If I hadn’t lost
recently a younger sister and my mother, I would not have believed that
such a thing was possible or necessary… but now I know where to place,
in my future life, my beloved missing ones; of Zarka I will think of a
girlfriend who had the courage to stand up against the big powers,
against the violence which every day threatens women who want to be
pretty, intelligent and different.

Under complicated, unfortunate circumstances, Zarka was a captive
of her intimacy: with her mother. When my own mother died three years
ago, Zarka told me dramatically; don’t give yourself up, put somebody
between you and your father… You should never become a surrogate for
your mother… I took her advice. But I also told her, you know, the
death of a mother is not the same as the death of a father, nor is a
widower the same as a widow.

When her mother died two months ago, she told me, you were right,
the death of a mother is something different. She asked for my book
"Matrimony," about the separation from a dead mother who does not let
go... About primary love, about the marriage with her, about the
symbiotic, cruel and painful relationship which a daughter has with her
mother in a patriarchal society. About hopelessness, which bears the
world but does not know of it.
When I think of Zarka I remember her eyes. I remember that sharp but
lenient intelligence: I do not know why she died, right now, when she
would have understood some things about Matrimony better than most of
us, who managed to escape the Power of Mother with fewer scars.

She didn’t manage to read my Matrimony and then reassure me and
herself: that I am neither stupid nor crazy, that, only, I cannot live
without my dead mother… That I hardly know who I am, or where I am
going, and that I am afraid that she will take me with her… Zarka was
taken by her mother. I will not be judgmental about it, nor express any
opinion on the matter, I will just claim that what happened to Zarka on
September 10th is something that threatens us women, each and every
day.